After taking a turn outside the village and seeing a few flocks of sheep, Du Zhongxiao had a rough idea in his heart.

There are still three families in this small village, and the other two are homesteaders, each with 30 to 50 acres of land and 50 or 60 sheep. The land they reclaimed nearby was a dozen acres at the largest, one or two acres at the smallest, and more than five or six acres in a contiguous area. If it is trimmed, the cultivation can be expanded, and in Du Zhongxiao's view, it is not too difficult to cultivate the flat land of twenty or thirty acres. Now there are too many wastelands, and they would rather open up the wasteland than repair it.

Xiangbu has capital, is a rich man, employs more than a dozen villagers, has more than 100 acres of land, 5 or 600 sheep, is a small landlord. Xiangbu was in charge of food and shelter for the villagers, but did not pay them, and allowed them to use their own cattle and horses to cultivate the surrounding wasteland. After about three years, these farmers can go out on their own and become small homesteaders.

Xiangbu was now the more common small landlord here, and the population from the north was mainly accepted by them. Because most of the Tibetan people from the north did not know how to farm, the yamen provided seeds and farming tools, and they could not change the production method for a while. You must live in the landlord's house for a few years and become familiar with the surrounding environment before you can be independent. Of course, not all of them will become yeoman farmers, and most of them, who have cultivated the land with the master's farm tools, will sell it when the time comes, and continue to work as farmers. You may farm your own land in a few years, or you may be a farmer for a lifetime.

A little inland, where the terrain is flat, the landlord will not allow the reclamation of wasteland, but will pay a monthly salary. The people who are paid are short-term employees, and most of them have their own family businesses. Or become a tenant, rent the land of the master's family, and pay the rent to the owner.

In this era, the land rent was basically divided between the tenant and the landlord after the tax was paid, and it was slightly adjusted according to the region and details. For example, if you use the landlord's cattle and farm tools, you will be divided into six fours, and your own cattle and farm tools may be four or six. Here on Hedong Road, especially the Volcano Army, there is a lack of population, more land, and more inclined to tenants, even if the landlord's cattle and horses are used, it is divided into 55.

In this era, monetary land rent was very rare, and there was basically no labor rent in the Song Dynasty, and most of them were rent in kind. As for the typical labor rent of feudal society in history class, it basically did not exist in China after the Qin and Han dynasties.

The government has limited financial and material resources, and can only reclaim wasteland in the form of farm work, only in areas with good arable land conditions. In hilly and mountainous areas like these, the yamen could not afford the cost, and they still had to rely on a large number of small landlords.

Xiangbu is a typical newly reclaimed area of the Volcano Army, mainly absorbing the Tibetan people from the north, and the Han people rarely come.

Taking field work as an example, the typical life of rural people is that the labor force goes out to farm, and when the farm is not working, it is either organized by the government to build water conservancy, or it does all kinds of short-term work, or even works as a small merchant to sell goods. Women and children were engaged in handicrafts, mainly in the textile industry, and the fabrics were sold for their own use, in order to obtain a limited amount of money to buy daily necessities.

This is the smallholder economy, one is farming, the other is weaving, and both are indispensable. The rural commodity economy is underdeveloped, and once there is no weaving, it is easy to fall into poverty by simply cultivating the fields. It is unreliable to rely solely on food in exchange for the necessities of life and the means of production.

Du Zhongxiao came to Xiangbu to see the advantages and disadvantages of the small-scale peasant economy and the form of farming, and correspondingly, what measures the yamen should take to encourage land reclamation. In addition to grain, there is also a very important comparison between sheep raising and mulberry hemp in this region.

At noon, Xiangbu ordered the guest to slaughter two chickens and a goose to entertain Du Zhongxiao. Nowadays, sheep want to produce wool and cashmere, which are the means of production to be exchanged for money, and they must not be slaughtered. It's the same as before, when you go to your house, you won't slaughter cows for guests.

Looking at the dishes on the table, Du Zhongxiao smiled. The mode of production has changed, and the way of life has also changed, and people have always changed themselves unconsciously. With the development of the wool industry, perhaps one day, the price of mutton in this area will also rise. At that time, pork became the most suitable meat again, and the eating habits were slowly changed.

The cost of raising pigs is higher than raising sheep, not only here, but also in most parts of China. Even in the Jiangnan and Guangnan areas, a large number of sheep are actually raised, as well as their exclusive breeds. It's just that in later generations, with the disappearance of barren grasslands in rural areas, there were fewer and fewer sheep and more pigs. However, even in the industrial society, pork is still more expensive than mutton in the way of raising local Chinese pig breeds in this era.

What is the cheapest meat? It is not the meat of meat animals, but beef, horse, donkey, and so on. One day, perhaps, mutton that cannot produce wool will be added. The quality of these meats is generally not good, so they can only be sold cheaply with more seasonings.

There are many kinds of domestic animals, and the thickest division also has meat use, service use, and service use, and the difference between ploughing and pack animals. The most promising development is the use of meat and servitude, such as some excellent cattle breeds. Sheep is a special one, because wool production is also a kind of means of production, and slowly sheep with both meat and wool have been cultivated. In an agrarian society, meat and livestock have always been more expensive, far more expensive than the meat of service livestock.

With a large number of horses, donkeys and mules in large numbers, the Volcano Army has already had this trend. Now in the most prosperous camps, there are fixed horse meat and donkey meat for sale, and the price is cheaper than mutton. The government forbade the slaughter of draft animals, and the horses, donkeys and mules here were the same as the cattle in the Central Plains, all of them died of illness or old age, and the meat was coarse and had a bad taste, and it was the meat of the poor.

The food in the countryside in this era was very different from Du Zhongxiao's previous imagination, and it was also completely different from the market where the Volcano Army relied on the garrison to consume before. When the guests come, the best meat is chickens, and pigs will only be slaughtered when they have to do big things, and other livestock cannot be killed.

Traditional Chinese meat, meat, and poultry are pigs and chickens, and sheep are a little different from these two because of their fur. Sometimes sheep are slaughtered just to get their fur, not to eat meat, which is only incidental.

How to make people in this era eat more meat? It is not to raise chickens and pigs, but to use a large number of draft animals, the value of draft animals is not in the meat, the price of meat is naturally much cheaper, that is the poor can afford to eat, can supply a large amount of meat. If you understand this, you will understand how the large number of meat-based snacks in later generations came about. For example, donkey meat in Baoding shows that there was once a prosperous business, and a large number of donkeys were used to transport goods. For example, beef soup and beef sauce illustrate the development of agriculture and some poor special marginalized groups. Because the mainstream farming population has a special affection for cattle, even if it is an old cow or a sick cow, they are often not slaughtered. Most of the people who deal with these things professionally are the unscrupulous and relatively poor people who are different from the mainstream society.

Agrarian society has its own unique logic of survival, and Du Zhongxiao has been exposed to it a lot, and slowly corrects his impression of his previous life. Due to the lack of cattle, horse farming, and the use of pack animals for commercial transportation, the supply of horse meat increased rapidly in just one or two years.

Slaughtering cattle and sheep for pleasure is the life of a large aristocratic landlord, not a small landowner in the countryside. In the harvest year, the guests are full of chickens and dolphins, and it is the time when the small landlord celebrates the New Year, and the guests usually come to the guests, which is nothing more than killing a chicken. The fish, shrimp and crabs in the river are everywhere, and they cannot be transported far away, so they are the ones who satisfy their daily cravings.

This is how Xiangbu entertained Du Zhongxiao, a chicken on the main table, half a goose, and a pot of boiled fish caught from the river, and the rest were vegetables grown in the field. There is only one way to cook all dishes, which is boiling, not to mention stir-frying, not even roasting and frying.

Drinking wine and eating tasteless meat dishes, Du Zhongxiao asked him about his life in the past six months.

Xiangbu seemed optimistic and content, starting from the beginning of the year, he and the other two families settled here, how to open the field, how to buy sheep, how to hire people to farm and herd sheep. Carefully calculated, by the end of the year, how much grain could be produced, and how much wool and mutton could be sold for money. When to hire someone, build a few more houses, and find a way to marry a daughter-in-law for his son.

Within a few miles of this small mountain village, where there are rivers, where there are mountains, where there are flat land that can be cultivated, everything is like a treasure. In less than two years from the mountains to the Volcano Army, he has already completed the cultivation of small landowners.

The small landlord had the troubles of the small landlord, and complained to Du Zhongxiao that the official service was too heavy. In this small village, he was the only high-class household, urging money and grain, inspecting the place, and doing chores for the yamen, all piled on his sons.

In the end, he also told Du Zhongxiao about the court recitals he had heard. He was not interested in any wars and peace with the Khitan and the party, where the war was fought, who was promoted, and who was dismissed. He listened to the music in his ears, and only those officials went to the court to say that the errand of the peasant households in the countryside was too heavy, and what was in front of the government, and the battle of breaking the family. If an official says that he wants to reduce the service, he is a good person in his eyes, and if an official wants to do something to increase the civil service, then it is a traitor.

Du Zhongxiao listened, crying and laughing. This patriarch of the Fan people who used to be in the mountains quickly completed the identity transformation and became a complete small landowner in the countryside, according to his simple love and hatred, he divided the officials in the court into two categories.

What is a traitor? What is a Loyal Minister? In his eyes, those who are good to themselves are loyal ministers, and those who are not good to themselves are traitors.

From the words of this small landlord who had just entered the role, Du Zhongxiao obviously heard the difficulty of reforming the government. It is said that the burden of households is reduced, how to reduce it? Alleviate who is a university question. It doesn't matter what kind of employment law or recruitment law you have, it's a good law not to let them go on errands. What is the green seedling method, the green seedling method, so that they can produce more food and pay less taxes is a good law.

As for direct and indirect gains, where can they clearly distinguish between benefits and disadvantages? They don't want to hear this kind of reasoning for the sake of temporary losses for the sake of long-term interests. The sustainability of a policy is the first requirement.

From the conversation with Xiangbu, Du Zhongxiao understood one thing, reform must not be easily profited and redeemed. Concessions can't last, redemption can't be maintained, and it's easy to change from a loyal minister to a big traitor in the eyes of ordinary people.

Please remember that the first domain name of this book is .. m.